It might have been history’s first social-media insurrection.
It might have been history’s first social-media insurrection. At least, it unfolded with all the speed and ferocity that user-generated content platforms encourage.
Outside observers may only have had fleeting encounters with the grievances that drew thousands of angry Nepalese citizens into the streets over the last several days. There was something about a social-media ban and frustration with government corruption. It was complicated. But the government’s response to the protests was clearly brutish. Police “opened fire on the crowds” protesting the government, injuring hundreds and killing at least 19. The violence was a scandal and, overnight, the government in Kathmandu collapsed. Nepal’s prime minister is gone, but the social-media sites that were briefly banned are back online today.
It was a harrowing event — a harbinger, the West’s prudentially apprehensive social-media critics warn. Could the “Gen Z” riots that brought Nepal to its knees happen in developed democracies? Can it happen here? Perhaps. But the parallels between Nepal and Western democracies are few and far between, and the story that reached its climax this week began years ago.
The Nepalese government does not have a laissez-faire relationship with social-media outlets. In 2023, the government banned the Chinese-owned app TikTok after claiming that it had disrupted “social harmony.” The ban was reversed after TikTok agreed to register with the government. The reversal was viewed at the time as an “overture to China,” but the gesture was reciprocated. Compliance with Nepal’s directives also compelled TikTok to scrupulously block content at the government’s behest. And it did just that — for a time.
Following the relative success of this endeavor, the government attempted to compel dozens of other social-media platforms — including Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram, Signal, WhatsApp, and Reddit — to submit to TikTok’s monitoring regime. Those platforms that did not comply would be banned, and on Thursday, access to 26 non-compliant social-media sites was blocked. Ironically, due to TikTok’s protected status, it was the only site on which protest organizers could push content that might catalyze anti-government protests. The demonstrators made the most of it:
As youngish protesters took to the streets, they organized not just around antipathy toward the social-media ban but “corruption” as well — another theme pressed by TikTok users.
“A social media trend, ‘Nepo Kid,’ has spread rapidly in Nepal in recent days, as young people accuse the children of politicians and influential figures of enjoying privileges funded by corruption,” the Kathmandu Post reported last week. “Users have shared images and videos showing luxury cars, foreign education, and lavish holidays, contrasting them with the struggles of ordinary citizens who often migrate abroad for jobs.”
The class-conscious agitation campaign certainly had an organic audience. Anti-corruption protests in Nepal are not uncommon. As recently as March, two Nepalese citizens were killed and dozens were injured — including police — as protesters demanded the restoration of the constitutional monarchy that was dissolved in 2008. The “NepoBaby” campaign channeled social-media users’ status anxiety into a rage that was directed at specific politicians and their families.
“Protesters set fire to the homes of some of the country’s most senior political leaders on Tuesday,” the Washington Post reported. The homes that were targeted include those of the head of the Nepali congress, the president, a former prime minister, and the onetime prime minister who just resigned over his role in the crackdown. The government’s brutal response to the threat the mob represented was a wild overreaction, animated perhaps by the urgency of the threat to their families. But the government lost. The demonstrators won. Social media won.
Could it happen here? Maybe if the U.S. government dispensed with its constitutional protections on speech and the platforms that host it, an act of tyranny that would be accompanied by the regular deployment of disproportionate, lethal force against anti-government actors. The equivalences between the United States, for example, and the Himalayan republic still reeling from a communist insurgency that was only put to bed 19 years ago are strained. But if the question is, can foreign assets like TikTok be wielded as weapons against their host countries, the answer is clearly “yes.”